Shafaqna Pakistan:Thirteen Pakistani expatriates were killed in a house fire in western Jordan, the country’s civil defence authority said on Monday.
The blaze broke out at dawn on Monday in a house inhabited by two Pakistani families in the town of Karameh before firefighters managed to bring it under control, the authority said in a statement.
Three other Pakistanis were injured in the fire, according to a report by Anadolu Agency. The cause of the fire remains unknown.
According to Reuters, the dead include eight children and the fire swept through makeshift dwellings in a farming estate in the Jordan Valley.
In a statement, a spokesman for Jordan’s civil defence, Iyad al Amre, said there were three other injuries in the fire that broke out after midnight that initial signs showed could have been an electrical fire.
Thousands of foreign labourers live in wretched conditions in private farms in the Jordan Valley, a fertile vegetable and fruit growing area.
Another civil defence source told Reuters that two families lived in corrugated iron sheds that housed immigrant labourers and that a police investigation had been opened into the incident.
Three other people were taken to hospital suffering from shock and burns.
Jordan has in recent years seen several deadly incidents among Syrian refugees living in camps during the winter, such as fires caused by electrical faults or choking from domestic gas stoves.